


Everything and Nothing

by Righ (Venenum)



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, but i warned you, minor character death really, there's a curveball in this fluff, welp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venenum/pseuds/Righ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie spends all his time with Jack, even after he dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything and Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short drabble, but I'll say this; trigger warning for death. Don't read it if you're iffy about that sort of thing.

Cold lips skate across your jaw-line and make you smile, trying to bank your laughter behind a huff as Jack pushes you down on your narrow single bed and stuffs his cold nose behind an ear. He's heavier than he looks, the wind is a sly thing that can turn him weightless when he pleases, but here in the dim glow of your orange bedside lamp it's as if all his paleness repels the color and turns him distinctly inhuman, more than enough of a sight to make you believe he could pin you down whenever he wanted.

Icy fingers skim under your t-shirt, which is just plain _mean_ , really.

He stays for hours like a particularly bony cat you can't (and wouldn't) get rid of. Likes to laze right up against you with his long arms hooked around your waist as you turn on the small box TV in your room for something to fill in the silence; run a palm up under the top you keep having to tug down until you relent and it finds a home over your heart; cool you down without meaning to. Pallid skin is never freezing when he decides to stick around, intensely self-conscious of how he might mess up after the first time his chilly touch found your cheek. These days, Jack stays at just under room-temperature and that suits the both of you just fine.

Sometimes his toes accidentally freeze the sheets, but you never complain.

It's during the really long days that you loathe, the ones where you work your soul-sucking shifts to pick up extra cash and put up with people so dull and monotone that you wonder how they were ever children, that he usually turns up. It's uncanny how he knows (and you rather think he _doesn't_ , but the illusion is nice) so you never mention how exhausted you are and eagerly welcome him in.

Your favorite moments are at three or four in the small hours of the morning where he lets himself fall into a steady doze. It isn't sleep (neither does he eat or breathe, you've come to learn) but too regularly for it to be an accident a caress down the slope of your throat has drawn you out of the Sandman's golden respite and into a world compromised of a blue collar and sharp Adam's apple, dampness sticking to your top where his frost has warmed with your body-heat.

You don't apologize, but he never indicts you should.

He blushes lilac, with dead blood full of ice-water, and you mouth the old veins spidering under his skin until graying lips smooth over yours and hold you a willing captive, lazy, peaceful, content with never needing anything but this slow rich world of touches in the small of your back with Jack's melting kisses.

 _You're so warm,_ he murmurs, trying valiantly not to break the stillness of this bubble of a homely room you should soon leave for the foreign excitement of college. Here, the world you share is endless and goes back forever, right to your first memories. This is home for both of you. 

_You, too_ , hums your tease.

He grins widely with pearly teeth and you snicker into a pillow that smells like the pine trees outside although you haven't touched one in days.

As it turns out, your heart remains and so does your head; you tell your mom that it's not nerves, you love being here and want to take a gap year. ( _Of course you can, whatever feels right._ ) You don't leave, at all. Not in the coming weeks where your friends are moving away and you just. _Stay. Still._ The first day of college comes and goes and you spend it by his lake instead of a thousand miles away, drawing his figure in quick sketches because he moves too damned fast to really let pencil be put to paper fast enough to do any justice. You wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

He shrugs when you ask his opinion on skipping out a year. 

_School is important,_ he agrees, sliding backwards near the bank. _It's not the end of the world if you don't feel like it's for you though, no matter what anyone says. Hey, watch this!_

When you aren't applauding his ridiculous ego (fragile, in reality) by the lake or sprawling for fun in your bedroom for hours at a time, Jack disappears to take winter where it needs to go and you lapse back into working a simple job, helping out your mom with chores and entertaining Sophie. With no school to worry about, your life is your own yet everything becomes an intermission until Jack returns, bright as a flare in the night sky.

 

 

He tells you he loves you when you aren't expecting it. 

Fiddling with the shower knob as you stand pressed naked together under chilly water ( _At least negotiate and let it stay lukewarm, Jack_ ) he tugs you closer with an arm wrapped around your waist, letting you duck your face into the curve of his neck, and rambles about how he hates the plumbing in your old house almost as much as he loves you.

There's not much talking after that for a long time and the middling heat of the spray turns cold long before either of you get out.

All in all, it's a perfect year of nothing and everything, greedily languishing in love like no one really knew what it was before you found one another. It feels like setting a new, wonderfully breathless standard.

 

 

When you die, he isn't there.

It's hot, unspeakably so in your friend's shitty old Toyota and the door keeps ramming into the bole of a tree as you sob and scream for someone to let you out. No one comes. It's off the beaten track and you were only headed out together to do some last minute landscape sketches before the sun went down. 

_No one comes_ , and the heat rises.

 

 

He holds you like a vice the second your eyes lay on one another again, years later. Words like _spirit_ and _memories_ mean so little from the surrounding crowd in the workshop, you don't think anything could feel as important as the way he combs familiar long fingers through your hair and kisses you so hard you can taste the thin salt in his tears. ( _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I couldn't find you._ ) When you kiss back, he sobs and pulls you into the nearest bedroom without pause for thought, ignoring the Guardians who politely shy their attention elsewhere.

Sometimes _your_ toes freeze the sheets, but neither of you has a reason to complain about much of anything these days.


End file.
